❈ ❈ ❈

The Great March of Hope: Gaza’s Defiance against Erasure

Dr Ramzy Baroud

The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.

During their forced displacement, they had no electricity and no means of communication, let alone coordination. They were ordinary people, hauling a few items of clothing and whatever survival tools they had following the unprecedented Israeli genocide. They headed north to homes they knew were likely destroyed by the Israeli army.

Yet, they remained committed to their march back to their annihilated cities and refugee camps. Many smiled, others sang religious hymns, and some recited national songs and poems.

A little girl offered a news reporter a poem she composed. “I am a Palestinian girl, and I am proud,” her voice blared. She recited simple but emotional verses about identifying as a “strong, resilient Palestinian girl.” She spoke of her relationship with her family and community as the “daughter of heroes, the daughter of Gaza,” declaring that Gazans “prefer death over shame.” Her return to her destroyed home was a “day of victory.”

“Victory” was a word repeated by virtually everyone interviewed by the media and countless times on social media. While many, including some sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, openly challenged the Gazans’ view of their perceived ‘victory,’ they failed to appreciate the history of Palestine—indeed, the history of all colonized people who wrested their freedom from the claws of foreign, brutal enemies.

“Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of (someone) armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end,” iconic anti-apartheid South African leader Nelson Mandela wrote in a letter to his wife in 1975 from his prison cell. His words, written in the context of South Africa’s struggle, feel as if they were written for Palestinians, especially Gaza’s latest triumph against erasure—both physical and psychological.

To understand this better, examine what Israeli political and military leaders said about northern Gaza immediately after the start of the genocidal war on October 7, 2023:

Israel will maintain “overall security responsibility” for the Gaza Strip “for an indefinite period,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with the ABC News network in November 2023.

One year later, the Israeli army reiterated the same sentiment. In a statement, Israeli Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that there would be “no return” for any residents of northern Gaza.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich went further. “It is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years,” he said on November 26, stating that Israel should re-occupy Gaza and “encourage” the migration of its inhabitants.

Many other Israeli officials and experts repeated the same notion like a predictable chorus. Settler groups held a conference last June to assess real estate opportunities in Gaza. In their minds, they were the only ones with a say over Gaza’s future. Palestinians seemed inconsequential to the wheel of history, controlled, as the powerful arrogantly believed, by Tel Aviv alone.

But the endless mass of people sang, “Do you think you can measure up to the free, measure up to the Palestinians?.. We will die before we surrender our home; they call us the freedom fighters.”

Many media outlets, including Israeli ones, reported a sense of shock in Israel as the population returned en masse to a fully destroyed region. The shock does not end there. Israel failed to occupy the north, ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, or break their collective spirit. Instead, Palestinians emerged stronger, more determined, and, equally frightening for Israel, with a new objective: returning to historic Palestine.

For decades, Israel invested in a singular discourse regarding the internationally recognized Palestinian Right of Return to their homes in historic Palestine. Almost every Israeli leader or top official since the 1948 Nakba (the ‘Catastrophe’ resulting from the destruction of the Palestinian homeland) echoed this. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak summarized it in 2000 during the Camp David negotiations, when he drew his “bottom line” in any peace deal with the Palestinians: there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees.

As Gaza has proven, Palestinians do not take their cues from Israel or even those who claim to represent them. As they marched north, four generations of Palestinians walked together, at times holding hands, singing for freedom and return—not only to the north but further north to historic Palestine itself.

Since the Nakba, Israel has insisted it will write the history of the land between the Jordan River and the sea. But Palestinians continue to prove Israel wrong. They survived in Gaza despite genocide. They remained. They returned. They emerged with a sense of victory. They are writing their own history, which, despite immeasurable and unimaginable losses, is also a history of hope and victory.

(Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out’. His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). Courtesy: Palestine Chronicle. The Palestine Chronicle website strives to highlight issues of relevance to human rights, national struggles, freedom and democracy.)

❈ ❈ ❈

The Life Expectancy of Palestinians Fell by 11.5 years in the First Three Months of the Genocide

Vijay Prashad

The idea of a ceasefire is as old as the idea of war. In old records, one reads of halts in firing for humans to eat or sleep. Rules of combat developed out of an understanding that both sides had to rest or refresh themselves. Sometimes, this understanding included the lives of animals. During the Easter Rising in 1916, for instance, the Irish rebels and the British troops stopped their shooting around St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin so that James Kearney, the park keeper, could enter and feed the ducks. It was this caesura, or pause, of gunfire that popularised the term ‘ceasefire’.

For Palestinians in Gaza, any ceasefire that promises to stop the bombardment and allow for the arrival of humanitarian aid (particularly food, water, medicine, and blankets) is a relief. In the days since 19 January, when a temporary ceasefire went into effect, aid at scale has been able to reach Gazans, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson Jens Laerke confirmed. On the first day of the ceasefire, 630 trucks entered Gaza—many more than the fifty to one hundred trucks per day that struggled to get in during the Israeli bombing. These trucks are ‘getting food in, opening bakeries, getting healthcare, restocking hospitals, repairing water networks, repairing shelter, family reunifications’, and carrying out other essential work, Laerke said. After almost five hundred days of genocidal violence, this aid is more than a relief. It is a lifeline. But this ceasefire agreement had first been tabled in May 2024, when it was approved by the Israeli government and later agreed to by Hamas until ultimately being rejected by Netanyahu. The guns could have been silenced then.

Palestine has been deeply impacted by the genocide. Using estimates from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2024, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights analysed the decline in Palestinian life expectancy caused by the Israeli bombardment in Gaza and found that Palestinian life expectancy at birth fell by 11.5 years between 2022 and 2023, from a respectable 76.7 years in 2022 to just 65.2 years in 2023. It was the first three months of the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing—from October to December 2023—that brought about this terrible decline in total life expectancy. We are not aware of such a rapid decline in life expectancy at any other period of modern human history. A Palestinian life is now more than seventeen years shorter than an Israeli one. This gap is greater than that which existed between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa, which was fifteen years in 1980.

Eleven and a half years lost per Palestinian. That is almost 60 million years lost for the remaining 5.2 million Palestinians who have remained in Palestine and survived the genocide. This loss cannot easily be recovered. It will take years of immense work to rebuild Palestinian society and reach anything near the pre-genocide life expectancy. Health systems will need to be rebuilt: not only hospitals and clinics, which were almost all destroyed in Gaza, but new doctors and nurses will have to be trained to replace those who were killed. Food systems will need to be recovered: not only bakeries, but fields will need to be detoxified and fishing boats repaired. Housing will need to be rebuilt to replace the 92% of homes in Gaza that were destroyed or damaged (what the UN has called a ‘domicide’). Schools will need to be rebuilt. The mental trauma that afflicts children will need to be healed so that they feel that these structures are not graves but places of safety and learning.

The data is messy. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the carnage, including at least 14,500 children. According to a report produced by the Danish Refugee Council, the Agricultural Development Association, and the Women’s Affairs Centre, between October 2023 and October 2024 ‘over 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, with individuals displaced an average of six times, and some up to 19 times’. Furthermore, the report states, Palestinians have faced forced displacement orders with ‘inadequate warning’ and have struggled to survive as the ‘designated “safe zones”’ have been ‘subjected to bombardment and lack basic resources’. The neurological problems faced by survivors are extreme. ‘There is ongoing concern for the mental health of everybody in Gaza, particularly for children who are so deeply traumatised’, Nebal Farsakh of the Palestine Red Crescent Society said, pointing out that ‘there are at least 17,000 children unaccompanied or separated from their parents’. As we noted in the first newsletter of this year, a December 2024 report conducted by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management in Gaza found that ‘96% of the children in Gaza felt that death was imminent’.

A preliminary assessment suggests that rebuilding Gaza will cost $80 billion. The UN Development Programme has signed an agreement with the Università Iuav di Venezia to design a new Gaza that proposes first building a city ‘nucleus’ for 50,000 people amidst the rubble and then building outwards. There are at least 50 million tons of rubble in Gaza from the destruction of more than two-thirds of the area’s infrastructure (including 92% of housing units), which will take years to clear. In the ruins, alongside the bodies of missing Palestinians, are unexploded munitions and toxic materials: it is not possible to just line up a row of bulldozers and drive from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other.

Palestinian institutions simply do not have the money to rebuild Gaza. The Gulf Arab states, which do have the money, will certainly try to wrest unforgiveable political concessions from the Palestinian political factions in exchange for any aid. The countries that want to make Israel pay for the devastation it has wrought on the Palestinians do not have the political leverage to do so, nor can they hope to push the countries that armed Israel (such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany) to pay for the damage done with their munitions.

The perpetrators of the genocide want to convert Gaza into their real estate playground. U.S. President Donald Trump says Gaza is a ‘phenomenal location’ that currently looks like a ‘massive demolition site’, echoing his son-in-law and advisor on Middle East strategy Jared Kushner’s assessment in February 2024 that Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’. Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the northern part of Gaza, including Gaza City, would remain a ruin and be annexed, while Israel would control the rest of Gaza and build settlements along its edges. The settler movement, which is hell-bent on ethnically cleansing the Palestinians—and part of Netanyahu’s base—is prepared to seize the beachfronts and build their own settlements there. The pressure on Palestinians to leave Gaza will remain intense, despite this momentary ceasefire.

Palestinians, who have lost at least 11.5 years of their lives as a result of this horror, will take what they can get now—even this threadbare ceasefire. But they deserve much more, and they will continue their struggle to get it.

That is why on 27 January, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering across Gaza began marching northward to their homes. They will not live through another Nakba (Catastrophe). They will rebuild with their fingers in the dirt if necessary.

(Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books. Courtesy: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research is an international, movement-driven institution focused on stimulating intellectual debate that serves people’s aspirations.)

❈ ❈ ❈

[Meanwhile, here are two articles on how Israel continues to violate the ceasefire. They reveal that the Palestine people have a very tough road ahead, but the Palestinians are indomitable.]

The Western Way of Genocide

Chris Hedges

(This is an extract.)

Gaza is a wasteland of 50 million tons of rubble and debris. Rats and dogs scavenge amid the ruins and fetid pools of raw sewage. The putrid stench and contamination of decaying corpses rises from beneath the mountains of shattered concrete. There is no clean water. Little food. A severe shortage of medical services and hardly any habitable shelters. Palestinians risk death from unexploded ordnance, left behind after over 15 months of air strikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes and blasts from tank shells, and a variety of toxic substances, including pools of raw sewage and asbestos.

Hepatitis A, caused by drinking contaminated water, is rampant, as are respiratory ailments, scabies, malnutrition, starvation and the widespread nausea and vomiting caused by eating rancid food. The vulnerable, including infants and the elderly, along with the sick, face a death sentence. Some 1.9 million people have been displaced, amounting to 90 percent of the population. They live in makeshift tents, encamped amid slabs of concrete or the open air. Many have been forced to move over a dozen times. Nine in 10 homes have been destroyed or damaged. Apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, bakeries, mosques, universities — Israel blew up Israa University in Gaza City in a controlled demolition — cemeteries, shops and offices have been obliterated. The unemployment rate is 80 percent and the gross domestic product has been reduced by almost 85 percent, according to an October 2024 report issued by the International Labor Organization.

Israel’s banning of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — which estimates that clearing Gaza of the rubble left behind will take 15 years — ensures that Palestinians in Gaza will never have access to basic humanitarian supplies, adequate food and services.

The United Nations Development Programme estimates that it will cost between $40 billion and $50 billion to rebuild Gaza and will take, if the funds are made available, until 2040. It would be the largest post-war reconstruction effort since the end of World War Two.

Israel, supplied with billions of dollars of weapons from the U.S. Germany, Italy and the U.K., created this hell. It intends to maintain it. Gaza is to remain under siege. After an initial burst of aid deliveries at the start of the ceasefire, Israel has once again severely cut back the trucked-in assistance. Gaza’s infrastructure will not be restored. Its basic services, including water treatment plants, electricity and sewer lines, will not be repaired. Its destroyed roads, bridges and farms will not be rebuilt. Desperate Palestinians will be forced to choose between living like cave dwellers, camped out amid jagged chunks of concrete, dying from disease, famine, bombs and bullets, or permanent exile. These are the only options Israel offers.

Israel is convinced, probably correctly, that eventually life in the coastal strip will become so onerous and difficult, especially as Israel finds excuses to violate the ceasefire and resume armed assaults on the Palestinian population, a mass exodus will be inevitable. It has refused, even with the ceasefire in place, to permit foreign press into Gaza, a ban designed to blunt coverage of the horrendous suffering and death.

[Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. His most recent book is “America: The Farewell Tour” (2019). Courtesy: Chris Hedges Report.]

❈ ❈ ❈

In the West Bank, Another ‘Gaza Genocide’ Unfolds

The Cradle’s Palestine Correspondent

Forty-eight days into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) crackdown on the resistance in the occupied West Bank, followed by roughly two weeks of Israeli military operations and a concurrent siege by PA security forces, the northern occupied West Bank remains engulfed in an intensifying joint military-security offensive.

This campaign, which began on 5 December 2024 with the PA’s assault on the Jenin refugee camp, saw a shift on 21 January 2025, when Israeli occupation forces took over. By 27 January, the campaign expanded to Tulkarem and its two camps, with further incursions into Tubas, Al-Faraa camp, and Tamoun.

In reality, these two offensives – by the PA and the occupation state – are deeply intertwined. During the PA’s operation, Israel provided intelligence via continuous drone surveillance over Jenin before executing airstrikes that resulted in the martyrdom of 12 Palestinians.

Once the Israeli military operation commenced, the PA withdrew, but not before reinforcing the siege alongside occupation troops, leading to the martyrdom and arrest of numerous resistance fighters.

Despite PA claims – specifically from Anwar Rajab, its National Security Agency’s spokesperson – that their forces retreated due to Israel’s attack and were unaware of the impending invasion, this narrative strains credibility.

The scale of the PA deployment – hundreds, at times nearly a thousand security personnel – would have made a sudden, uncoordinated withdrawal amid an Israeli assault highly improbable. The PA’s presence, including snipers, roadblocks, and security patrols, suggests a level of coordination rather than a hasty retreat.

A coordinated effort against the resistance

Eyewitnesses and sources within the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) tell The Cradle a different account. The Jenin Brigade of the PIJ’s military wing, the Quds Brigades, has faced an unprecedented double-pronged attack aimed at eradicating the battalion.

According to the sources, the Jenin Brigade previously ensured their survival by relocating key commanders and fighters to surrounding villages, mountainous hideouts, and other resistance strongholds in Nablus, Tulkarem, Tubas, and the Jordan Valley upon detecting incoming Israeli special forces.

“This time, the PA ambushed the retreating fighters and arrested dozens of them, and those who tried to flee or resist were shot and wounded or killed,” the sources say, adding that hospitals also became battlegrounds, with the PA reportedly lying in wait to detain and torture wounded resistance fighters. Even medical personnel suspected of aiding injured fighters faced persecution.

This collaboration was crucial for Israel, as security considerations and limited forces in the occupied West Bank had previously prevented them from conducting such widespread sweeps alone. The PA’s complicity in hunting down resistance fighters allowed Israel to operate with relative impunity.

Local sources confirm to The Cradle that PA forces, taking cover in civilian vehicles, pursued resistance fighters across Jenin’s towns – Araba, Ya’bad, Kferet, and beyond – continuing the chase into Tubas.

Fighters attempting to regroup were kidnapped in locations like Siris, Deir Ghazala, and Ya’bad. In some cases, direct clashes erupted, allowing resistance fighters to escape. In Ya’bad, PA security forces are said to have fired indiscriminately at the mountains, hoping to strike any hidden resistance members.

Deception and entrapment: The revoked agreement

Many in Jenin accuse the PA of deception, having misled the resistance into believing a settlement was brokered through tribal mediator Daoud al-Zeer.

After the cessation of the war in Gaza and the settlement game conducted by Ramallah, the resistance fighters decided to withdraw and spread to different areas of Jenin for fear of the PA’s treachery and persecution inside the camp, as well as to spare blood and prevent bloody clashes if the PA tries to arrest one of them, a local source explains to The Cradle:

“The PA Security Command deluded its elements that the agreement was made to prevent PA elements from leaking information to the resistance after Ramallah discovered a problem in the loyalty of a number of officers and soldiers. Then with the start of the military operation of the occupation, decisions came to raid the villages and towns of Jenin, including medical centers, outskirts of villages, abandoned houses, mosques and homes of liberated prisoners.”

Before Israel’s offensive, the PA had already arrested over 70 Palestinians, subjecting them to severe torture. Reports surfaced of security forces filming and circulating videos of detainees in humiliating conditions.

While the PA scaled back direct security operations in Jenin as occupation troops took over, its intelligence activities persisted, identifying safe houses and alternative resistance headquarters, particularly in Tamoun and Horsh al-Saada.

Tel Aviv openly acknowledged this collaboration. Alon Ben-David, a military analyst for the Israeli Channel 13, noted Israel’s “satisfaction with the level of coordination with the PA during the Jenin operation.”

Old wine in a new bottle

Israel’s latest operation in the northern occupied West Bank has been dubbed “Iron Wall,” a name eerily reminiscent of “Swords of Iron,” the initial title of its war on Gaza post-Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Although later renamed “Genesis War” or “War of Resurrection” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, these biblical allusions tap into the occupation state’s broader ideological and territorial ambitions.

The previous Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, “House and Garden,” launched in July 2023, was intended to demonstrate the occupation army’s “willingness to take military action against [the resistance] in the West Bank, even if it means confronting [it in] Gaza.”

As with the previous operation, “The Israeli operation aims to inflict significant damage on the [resistances’] infrastructure, recognizing that complete eradication may not be achievable.”

While Israel’s rhetoric suggests a long-term occupation of Jenin, its actions – such as deploying elite forces, occupying civilian buildings, and burning homes – indicate preparations for a larger annexation strategy.

The Israeli military has exaggerated its findings, claiming to have uncovered RPGs, 150 explosive devices, and 10 weapon labs in Jenin. However, photos reveal little more than homemade launchers and improvised grenades. Ironically, the PA’s earlier operation in Jenin touted even larger seizures, further exposing the coordinated nature of these offensives.

Different tactics

Despite the exhaustion of the Palestinian resistance due to the PA’s prolonged siege and depletion of its ammunition, military cells have still managed to inflict serious damage on the invading forces. The resistance’s effectiveness was showcased by the urgent air evacuations of dead and wounded Israeli soldiers – an indication of the severity of their injuries and their numbers.

Israel acknowledged the death of Reconnaissance Battalion soldier Liam Hazi and the serious wounding of five others. However, resistance factions, particularly the Quds Brigades and Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, claim higher enemy casualties.

Most resistance operations were concentrated in the Jenin governorate, where guerrilla-style ambushes and surprise attacks disrupted Israeli advances. In Tulkarem, the early discovery of an infiltrating occupation special unit forced a premature incursion, thwarting an intended assassination. Meanwhile, in Azzun, attacks on Israeli forces – including the use of explosive devices – have resumed after a temporary lull.

At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in recent operations, 16 of them confirmed civilians. Israel increasingly relies on airpower, with drones and Hermes 450 warplanes conducting over 170 attacks across the occupied West Bank since 7 October 2023. One of the latest victims was Qassam’s Tulkarem commander Ihab Abu Atiwi, who was assassinated in Nur Shams camp by an airstrike.

At the time of writing, over 100 homes have been demolished, families displaced, and infrastructure systematically destroyed. The bulldozing of Jenin’s Mahyoub Street and Tulkarem’s city center suggests a long-term occupation strategy aimed at erasing resistance strongholds and furthering annexation plans.

The expansion to Tulkarem

On 27 January, Israel launched a large-scale attack on Tulkarem and its two refugee camps, mimicking the tactics used in Jenin. While no formal announcement was made, Israeli forces forcibly displaced residents at gunpoint, particularly in the Airport and Hanoune Square neighborhoods.

Snipers occupied high-rise buildings, electricity was cut off, and hospitals – Martyr Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital and Al-Israa Specialized Hospital – were besieged, obstructing emergency medical services.

Israeli bulldozers continued destroying infrastructure while checkpoints and roadblocks choked off movement across the occupied West Bank. In total, 898 military checkpoints and barriers, including 18 newly installed iron gates, now restrict Palestinian movement. The scale of destruction in Tulkarem, including widespread home demolitions and road closures, mirrors Jenin’s fate.

With the expansion of military operations, Israel’s “Iron Wall” strategy has begun to take shape in the occupied West Bank. If this campaign is indeed a smaller-scale replication of “Iron Swords,” then it signals what has long been suspected: a methodical effort in collaboration with the PA to crush resistance through siege, displacement, and destruction.

The question is no longer whether the occupation intends to remain in the occupied West Bank – it is how much of it they intend to swallow.

(Courtesy: The Cradle, an online news magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.)